Femme Power

Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

I woke up with some thoughts ringing in my head.   This happens when my mind is stuffed with topics to write about but can’t seem to start any of them.   So I decided to put them all in one sitting and share them with you now.

Figure out how fast you can manage to put yourself through a looking glass without flinching.

1.   If your life were made into a movie, would you like what you’d see?

2.   Would you be proud to show your own “movie” to your family?

3.   If your mind were a movie, how would you rate it?

4.   If you had $5M, what would you do with it?

5.   Are you a good influence to the people around you?

6.   What legacy do you intend to leave in this world, if you even thought of any?

7.   Have you affected somebody’s life in a positive way?

8.   If you had a magic wand that could get you to any place and time you opt, where would you be now?

9.   If you had a hand in redirecting your life, what would you change in your past?

10. Granting you believe in heaven and hell, where do you think you’re going in case you breathe your last now?

Just some thoughts.   Now live on.

January 1, 2009. 12:05 am. The sky is far from ordinary. Colors and shapes coming from expensive fireworks occupy the vast space which is normally donned with the faint twinkles of distant stars. But now, the glitters and sparkles are much nearer and the colors aren’t silver and gray but all the colors you could ever imagine.

As my 7-year old daughter puts it, it’s a rainbow sky.

We’re definitely back in Metro Manila. Watching from the rooftop of our rented apartment, my hubby, daughter and I gasp as the flickers and explosions of colors fill the sky from all sides. We are in the middle of breath-taking fireworks displays being held simultaneously in our neighboring communities - Santolan Pasig, Eastwood Libis and Major Dizon Marikina.

From where we are, the noise is just right and the sights are amazing that I’m having difficulty choosing which fireworks to watch.

Earlier that night, government representatives drove around our neighborhood to campaign against firecrackers. They persuaded people not to buy and use firecrackers for their own safety and reminded them that firecrackers are banned in this city.

Good thing, I mused. Coming from Davao City, where firecrackers have been banned for the past seven years, I am accustomed to New Year celebrations without gory news of firecracker-related injuries. I am used to walking around without the fear of getting tossed with watusi and triangles nor being attacked with allergy from the fumes of firecrackers.

I just love the simple Yuletide celebrations in my hometown.

But as I watch the spectacle of colors in the New Year sky tonight here in Metro Manila, I can’t help but be pleased about it.

No, I’m not the type who would spend a single cent for firecrackers even when the law would permit. But as a spectator from afar, watching a sky full of colors and listening to distant explosions of fireworks are making me a kid once more.

It’s a much better feeling than watching fireworks displays on TV like I always did.

December 25, 2008.  11 pm.   Nobody else is awake but me.   No other sound but the clicking of the keyboard, the soft hum of the industrial fan and the concert of snores courtesy of my younger brothers.   No fireworks.   No sound of parties from afar.  Nothing.

This is Christmas night in Davao City where firecrackers are strictly banned.   Of course, last night was festive when we had our Noche Buena sans the fireworks.   Our laughters were enough to drown the night.

But tonight, after last night’s get-together, everyone is down but me.

Maybe the reason why I can’t sleep is that I’m too happy and overwhelmed that I’m here with my biological family even just for the holidays.   I wanna savor the moment.  Though I have learned to like Manila and have been seriously considering buying a house there, I can’t deny my soft spot for my hometown.   After all, my family and most of my friends are here.

It’s a silent Christmas night here in Davao.   I have all the time to reflect and thank God for all the blessings we receive, set out plans for the family and be happy I have my loved ones healthy, complete, blissful with their respective lives.  No amount of fireworks, however grand, can counter that.

The night is still but not eerie nor sad.   It’s the sound of peace.   The sound of silent bliss.   And this is my kind of Christmas.

Since I decided to turn my back on the rat race and take a back seat, most of my world has changed. My priorities changed. My mindset changed. My environment changed.

I am practically new here in Manila, barely a few months old. Me and my daughter just moved in from Davao City to join my husband who is based here. For several weeks since we moved here, I have walked around the neighborhood many times familiarizing myself to every nook and cranny in this part of Marikina.

Eventually I met new people and mingled with them occasionally. Some I meet practically everyday in my daughter’s school. A lot of them are nice and friendly - the teachers, the owners of the apartment we’re renting, the church people, the neighbors.

I met several parents in school. I learned about their means of livelihood, their lifestyle, even their financial plights. Three of them have borrowed money from me a few weeks after we first got acquainted.

I also learned that I’m being talked about by some parents in school because I’m “all dressed up” when I go send or fetch my kid. I defy the popular, and shall I say, acceptable getup which is a pair of pambahay shorts and a T-shirt or a strappy top, making me look a little overdressed in my jeans, blouse and flats. And is it just my imagination to see some of them wince whenever I’d utter an English word or sentence when I couldn’t grope for the Tagalog equivalent of which? My only alternative to English is my Visayan dialect (which they wouldn’t comprehend anyway) when my Tagalog runs out.

Since I got here I’ve made a number of fine-tuning on myself so that I wouldn’t look so alien. I shunned wearing cosmetics and accessories which I couldn’t do without, back in Davao. I sharpened my Tagalog and refrained from speaking English and Bisaya as much as I could help. I restrained myself from discussing what I really wanted to talk and learn about - the Philippine politics, the integrity of our judicial system, what small businesses are practical and viable in the local market today if I had the money and the vast income opportunities one can find in the internet - discussions that would make me think and information that would help me grow.

Instead, I’d limit myself to issues like school projects and activities and kitchen recipes so I’d stay on the loop of conversations with other moms in school.

But how far should one go in order to fit in?

A few times some parents tried to share gossips with me about another parent they dislike in school. But they stopped when they noticed I wasn’t interested in other people’s lives. I believe that if they could mock one person, they could do the same thing to me when I’m not looking.

Inasmuch as I wanted to assimilate the ways of some people surrounding my new world, I can’t completely walk away from who I am – the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I dress up, my way of thinking.

I don’t mind talking about recipes and running a household, they help me grow. I don’t mind petty conversations either, they’re a breather. But rumor mongering is one thing that I can’t allow myself to be deduced to adapting. And neither can I visualize myself walking around the school campus clad only in my pambahay.

Filipinos have this uncanny gift for pakikisama and pakikibagay which, I think, is a good thing. But when values are put on the line, it’s time you put a foot down. I’d rather be different than improper.

Sure, I’ve changed - My priorities shifted from the rat race to family affairs; to saving for the family’s future instead of buying useless nick knacks that I fancy; and I’m less vain now more than ever. These are good changes. But to change myself by jumping over the bandwagon of mediocrity and hypocrisy just to fit in is simply unacceptable.

I may have said goodbye to paperworks, clever conversations and a few personal vanities…But I will never say goodbye to myself.

I have enumerated in the first part some of the women I look up to for having done exceptional accomplishments in their respective fields of passion.

In this second part, I’d like to pay tribute to two ordinary women who in their own ways managed to positively impact other people’s lives especially their own kids’ - my late Lola Felisa and my ever cheerful mom, Annie.

Both of them have stories that are usually used as plots in soap operas. But I am a living witness that their’s are genuine.

Lola Felisa used to be a househelp who fell in love with a hardworking well-off man, my late lolo Basilio. Together, they grew their modest business ventures which included sand & gravel, tricycle renting, and a vulcanizing shop.

They housed and sent to school a number of distant relatives and gave them jobs too. My late grannies were also both active in the church, hence several church people knew me as well (coz I was always in their tow).

As a child, I felt so safe then when Lola Feling was around. She was the type who didn’t think twice about helping without expecting something in return.

She was the woman behind the success of my Lolo. Her wisdom about life despite her lack of a college degree, her unwavering passion for helping the needy, and her being strong in times of adversities have made her my heroine.

To me, her strength continues to linger even after she had gone. It took me more than five years to stop crying for her death. But I have to admit that I still miss her now after almost a decade. Whenever I think of Lola Feling, I become a child again who wants to seek refuge from her.

My mom’s story, on the other hand, is that of a fine lady raised well by her parents, well-educated, but whose heart was captured by a man from a poor family (that’s my good-looking papsie). Their love story was stormed with trials and incessant meddling by people who did not agree of their love team.

Still, my mom chose her heart and suffered the consequences. Despite being hard-up at the start, my mom never even thought of leaving my dad. She persevered to work like a horse (Well, I got my working style from her.) so she could support my dad raise us all seven kids! Yes, six boys and me, the muse hehehe.

I don’t know how they did it but they succeeded in sending us all to school and give us a good life. The tough life we experienced when we were kids served as a good learning ground for us siblings to be creative, ambitious and survivors.  Now I can say we’re living our lives to the fullest.

Words are not sufficient to express all I want to say of the two most influencial women in my life - Lola Feling and Mama Annie.   But the lessons they imparted in me and all the other souls they’ve helped become better individuals will live on for generations.

In one of the best books I’ve read, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho, a boy yearned to know the secret of happiness and sought the answer from the wisest man in the world.

The wise man instead asked the boy to look around his palace while the boy carried a spoon full of oil. The boy had to return after two hours of wandering without allowing the oil to spill. The boy did as he was told, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon as he wandered around the wise man’s palace. Indeed, after two hours he returned to the wise man with the oil still on the spoon.

The wise man asked the boy if he saw the tapestries hanging in his dining hall, the magnificent garden that took his master gardener 10 years to create, or the beautiful parchments in his library. None of these were seen by the boy as his attention was focused on the spoon alone, careful not to spill the oil.

So the wise man asked him to go back and observe, still carrying the spoon full of oil. This time the boy observed the works of art on the walls and ceilings, the gardens, the mountains around it, all the marvels in and around the wise man’s palace.

When he returned to the wise man, he was proud to narrate everything that he saw. But the wise man asked about the drops of oil he entrusted to the boy. It was all gone.

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon,” said the wise man.

Sometimes we tend to be too indulged in one or a few aspects of our lives that we forget to stop and smell the flowers (though it’s just as bad if all we do is smell the flowers without being productive, however you define productivity).

I used to have a fast-paced life. With highly-demanding jobs I held for the past 14 years, I hardly noticed that time has passed me by.

True, my past careers brought me self-satisfaction, growth and excitement. And even if I had the power to turn back time, I would still work with the same passion.

Only this time I would allow myself to enjoy my leave credits and slow down when I or my daughter gets ill; I would not skip lunches and coffee breaks; I would allot time for important family occasions instead of rendering endless overtime. I would work smart, not hard.

But I can’t turn back time. In my new career as the COO of my own household, I find ways to channel my energy into pursuing my other interests (obviously topping the list is blogging) apart from starting my own business.

After all, I wouldn’t wanna wander around spilling my oil.